January 24, 2012 |
LIKE THIS ARTICLE ?
Join our mailing list:
Sign up to stay up to date on the latest Education headlines via email.
In October 2011, the White House announced, “Currently, more than 36 million Americans have federal student loan debt.” By the end of 2011, student loan debt had exceeded $1 trillion. Two-thirds of college seniors graduate with student loans, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. According to the Project on Student Loan Debt, they carried an average of $25,250 in debt in 2010, but many have far greater debt than that average. And nowadays, with high unemployment, even higher underemployment, the inability to pay bills, and accumulating interest and penalties, the lives of student loan debtors can quickly turn into financial nightmares.
Indentured Servitude? I’ll be paying for my student loans for the rest of my life....A large portion of my earnings goes to the Wall Street elites that have commoditized and securitized my loans....I knew at the time I signed the student loans (again and again) that I would be responsible...what I didn’t figure was the cost to my children —Jeff Vincent, AlterNet
How outlandish is it to say that the spirit of indentured servitude has been revived in the United States? What can young people and their parents do to prevent student loan debt servitude, and what can all of us do to help liberate student loan debtors who are currently doomed to decades of financial misery?
Colonial Indentured Servants and Modern Student Loan Debtors
In colonial America, historians estimate that between one-half and two-thirds of white immigrants arrived as indentured servants. Indentured servants in England were in servitude typically for one year, while indenture in America was typically four to seven years. Today in the United States, student debt is an even longer debt commitment than colonial indentured servitude. The standard Stafford federal loan is, for example, 15 years, and with waivers and refinancing, it is not uncommon for Americans to be paying off student loans well into middle age.
In “Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture,” Carnegie Mellon University professor Jeffrey Williams concludes, “College student loan debt has revived the spirit of indenture for a sizable proportion of contemporary Americans.” Williams points out that college loan debt, like indentured servitude, “looms over the lives of those so contracted, binding individuals for a significant part of their future work lives.”
Similar to students signing their college loan papers, indentured servants also “freely chose” their servitude. In colonial times, while the elite saw indentured servitude as a freely chosen and fair economic deal, the servants themselves routinely saw it as an exploitative system of labor, a form of time-limited slavery. Like colonial indentured servants who “freely chose” to sign papers agreeing that they would pay off their debt directly in labor, modern student loan debtors “freely choose” to sign papers agreeing to pay off their debt. However, this is a choice that the financial elite do not have to make.
Like colonial indentured servitude, the student loan contract is virtually unbreakable. Student loans are enforced by garnishing wages, and unlike most other forms of debt, student loan debt is almost never forgiven even in personal bankruptcy.
Similar to some indentured servants, some student loan debtors—most famously, Michelle and Barack Obama—do go on to prosper. However, half of those who attend college don’t graduate, and many college graduates do not get high-paying jobs and struggle to make debt payments for much of their adult lives.
The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 20, 2010) reported, “Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants....The growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all.”
Maybe, it's time to question the traditional college education model. Everyone is looking at loan debt, the higher expense of college, etc., and no one is looking at how the loans are rising-do we still need to force students to take 2 years of basic study classes, many of which are repeat of college prep classes in high school? Why should students and families take out loans on classes like gym, art appreciation, speech, etc.? Wouldn't elminating the two years of basic studies help everyone in the long run, by reducing the debt in half, and focusing the efforts on classes that truly matter?
ReplyDeleteBernie Madoff was right. This entire economy is nothing but a Ponzi scheme. From fractional reserve banking to the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Act giving the creation and control of our nation's money supply to the private banksters, everything is designed to steal the assets and labor of the working class. The banksters break the fraud laws with impunity while the FBI and Justice Department go after kids who download songs. If you control the money creation as the banksters do, then it is no wonder that congress, the executive branch, and the courts are all bought off and/or influenced by those with the money. We can change all of this by repudiating these debts (they were created out of thin air anyway) and putting the creation of money back under the control of newly elected representatives through the Treasury. Spend the new money on infrastructure, affordable housing, and things which actually benefit the people. Money will then not represent a debt (Federal Reserve Note) but the actual creation of real things for a real economy. People need to educate themselves about the creation of money in this country--the most important education of all.
ReplyDeleteIndentured Servitude? BULL S***. Nobody forced them to go to school. When I graduated high school (1999), I couldn't afford to go to school. So I got a job. I met the requirement, but I couldn't afford the high cost of college. Instead of having a more social in my 20s, I worked 40, 50 sometimes 60 to 80 hours a week. So now you are telling me I have to work even harder to pay higher taxes so that people who knew they couldn't afford to pay back their student loans can get a free ride? Where is my hand out? Also, when I was 20 I racked up a personal debt of over 50k -- all unsecured. I paid it back when I was 22. So its not impossible to pay it back.
ReplyDeleteYou are a bitter one, Anonymous...
DeleteYour taxes aren't going to go up because of this. The guaranteed student loan program is already expected to gross 20% in profits. That's your government -- OUR government -- making a profit off of the education of its people.
When you were 20, you were also in the middle of a bubble of an economic boom. The fact that you were able to pay something off back then is meaningless.
What irony. I graduated from college 40yrs ago. The last four decades have been spent unlearning the propaganda and programming. History, economics, science, government, business, all had to be relearned. Nothing taught in college will prepare you for real life(reality). That education was "shaped" by the "state" to say the least. We are graduating dummies
ReplyDeleteWe're a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your site provided us with valuable info to work on. You have done an impressive job and our whole community will be grateful to you.
ReplyDeleteSteve Madden Women's Wicked-L Wedge